An Impressive Effort to Block Freedom

We bought a SIM card on Hong Kong for the mobile data. It was only an 8 day tourist SIM but it had 5gb of mobile data which would be difficult to use in just 8 days. Anyway, we were told the card wouldn’t work when we left Hong Kong.

I didn’t really think much of it but it’s pretty obvious that it wouldn’t work outside of Hong Kong because the Chinese networks have huge restrictions on the internet and a ton of monitoring on call and text messages. I’ve read somewhere that there’s around 2 million people monitoring all aspects of internet usage. And Americans think they have it bad…

On the train out of Hong Kong I had the mobile data enabled and near the border I was watching our progress on Google Maps. As we crossed the river marking the border between Hong Kong and China my phone lost the mobile signal. Literally, the SECOND we crossed the border the mobile network disappeared. That’s impressive as it must have taken some effort to achieve. That is how far China is willing to go to ensure its citizens cannot be free!